Do you know that December is the month when employees are most likely to call in "sick"? An October 2014 CareerBuilder survey exploring the "most creative employee excuses" says so! More than 20% of employers surveyed said that December is the worst month for unscheduled employee absences, followed by January and February.
The fact that it's a December to remember to skip work doesn't seem all that surprising. December means flu season, and our co-worker may truly be feeling under the weather today. Chances are good, however, that at least one of our co-workers will soon be feeling "sick" in a I'm-sick-of-work kind of way. Funny how it always happens on a Friday or a Monday, huh?
Back in the old days [read: The 1990s], the only way to know that co-workers were faking it until making it back to work was to bump into them at the grocery store, where curiously, they were looking as chipper and healthy as can be. It's like the time we skipped an 8 a.m. class to sleep in, only to run into the professor a few hours later in the student union building. It's Murphy's Law that when we're out "sick," we'll be sunk in person when we least expect it.
Oh, hi! [Fake, exaggerated cough, fake, exaggerated cough...] I just came in here for a minute to look for cough medicine. Then why are you in the party supplies aisle with a giant container of hot 'n spicy chicken wings, Doritos and beer in your cart? Hmm.***
Now employees are busting themselves on social media without anyone having to leave the office. Social media is the modern-day equivalent of a huge, online grocery store! One in four employers (24%) will catch an employee lying about being sick this holiday season simply by checking their social media pages. More than one-fifth (22%) of these employers will proceed to fire the employee, too.
Many employers will be in the holiday spirit, however, and let bytegones be bytegones: More than half (54%) will simply tell the employee to never, ever let it happen again. Ever.
By the way, which career fields boast the highest number of "sick" employees during the holidays? Well, our friends in Professional and Business Services tend to call in sick most often (35%). They're probably out of the office trying to decipher what "Professional And Business Services" means just like the rest of us. Sales employees come in a close second (34%). Please leave another message, thanks!
There are a few fields, however, where employees will stick around like glue this holiday season. Employees working in IT, Retail and Leisure and Hospitality jobs are the least likely to call in sick, according to CareerBuilder. Make sure to thank them for showing up, will you?
So what have we learned from this short, random post? One, that a few of our co-workers will be calling in "sick" soon, and our gut instinct will tell us they're probably lying; two, employers are using social media to bust today's "sick" employees; three, it took a huge dose of happenstance on our lunch break to bust a "sick" co-worker back in the 1990s; and four, our co-workers in outside sales will be largely "out of the office" until January.
The IT department will be on call the entire time, though. Hey, we don't want to the computers to come down with a nasty virus, do we?
*** Any resemblance to 1990s-era actual work situations is completely unintentional.
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